Approaches to Auschwitz

Sifting and synthesizing the best Holocaust scholarship so that sheer volume does not make it inaccessible, this book brings together a wide range of material on the Holocaust which no other single work on the subject contains. Its two authors, one Jewish and one Christian, have long experience of writing and teaching on the Holocaust, and their study is intended not least as a basic textbook. Beginning with hostility to Judaism in the ancient world, not least in Christianity, the first part of the book traces antisemitism through the history of the church, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, to nineteenth-century Europe, then goes on to the events which directly led to the Holocaust. The second part describes the planning and implementation of the Holocaust; the third part responses to it, both those of Germans carrying on 'business as usual' while it was happening, and those of the victims, survivors and Christian and Jewish theologians and philosophers who have subsequently reflected on it. A conclusion considers the legacy of the Holocaust, and there is a full bibliography.